Friday, September 30, 2011

When I tried this list experiment over on the SufficientSelf.com forum it worked like a charm. Not so much now. Despite my best planning and intentions it's been falling apart lately (and yes I know all about intentions and their pet mice and how they work on a paving crew building a road). It's all good though...I'm going with the flow. See how flowy I am? Like liquid butter.

Here's a recap of yesterday:

Paperwork not faxed...despite my repeated reminders, Mr. Awesome neglected to sign them!! Got it done late last night after work but missed the deadline. Hopefully it won't cause any problems.

No grocery list made however I did peruse the ads so it should come together fairly quickly.

I did call the music store to decline the $200 in clarinet repairs. Middle Oompa chose to rent a trombone from the school instead. Oh joy, can't wait to hear her practicing!!!

Here's where my careful planning would have paid off beautifully...I had all the necessary components for Baked Chicken Nachos. There was seasoned pre-cooked meat, chips, beans and a plethora of cheese all waiting for Mr. Awesome to assemble for dinner when he got home from work since I was working the dinner shift at the camp. Now throw in a few hours of unexpected overtime for him and you get three hungry kids calling me at 7pm wondering where the heck dear ol' dad was and can they just have cereal for dinner!!

So glad I left number 5 blank. Makes me feel better that there is one less task I wasn't able to accomplish.

Not that I'm keeping score but here's today's hit list...

Boy Oompa's online conference with his charter school at 10am

Grocery shopping

At least a partial day of school lessons with boy Oompa

Have oldest girl Oompa at the high school at the correct time(she's supposed to let me know this afternoon). The 7th grade band will be marching in the halftime parade with the alumni band. Mr. Awesome told her we'd all be there in the stands, in the cold watching. Of course his plans change at the last minute and he'll be here in our cozy home with a friend who's coming to stay for the weekend. Nice...real nice!!

Go to bed early! This should be by far the easiest. I need my rest to Saturday's excursion with the Oompas and my brother to the Ohio Renaissance Festival. His gal, my "other" sister is in a belly dancing troupe that performs daily at the fair. I've never seen her dance live and the ren fair is a perfect place to start my holiday shopping!!!

I'm considering this experiment completed...and sadly failed. The concept was interesting but factoring in our ever changing world, it's set me up for frustration. I can flow with the changes much better without a list.
Flowingly yours....Deborah

Thursday, September 29, 2011

In the spirit of, "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again", I'm back at it with my list! Tuesday and Wednesday were not as I had planned but then again, when does life ever go as we plan? As a self-proclaimed control freak that's a hard lesson for me to learn. I'm not all that good at just going with the flow. I don't flow well. However, I've heard that practice makes perfect so again, I make a list in a hopeful kinda way and vow to just see where the day takes me!

5 Things for Thursday:

Fax paperwork to Mr. Awesome's employer. He was supposed to do it last night but forgot and of course it's needed today.

Write up my grocery list for tomorrow's shopping trip.

Return call to Sweetman Music regarding middle Oompa's clarinet. Their repair estimate is $207....we found a complete set of replacement pads for $13.20. Mr. Awesome is gonna take care of the repair himself!!

Have dinner made or at least mostly assembled before I leave for work at 2:30pm. As much as I would like to leave dinner plans up to Mr. Awesome I am a realist. He doesn't cook nor has any desire to learn to cook. On those rare occasions when he's called upon to provide a meal we end up eating take-out or chili or worst of all....take-out chili.

My number 5 has stumped me. Having to go to work this afternoon leaves me with a shortened day here at home. I really don't know if I can commit to a 5th task on top of homeschooling the boy Oompa, laundry and those already on my list. Thinking I'll leave this one blank for today!!

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Sigh, yesterday was not my most productive day. I had to make a few last minute revisions to my list and while I did accomplish a few things, there were not those on my list. Here's how it went...

Layout pattern and get material cut to make girl Oompas' jammies I looked at the wrong material yardage when I was at the store and didn't have enough material to make the jammies...like not even close!! I'll be stopping by the fabric store this weekend and as long as they still have the print in stock I'll get the extra I need.

Make up and mail a care package to my wonderful in-laws who ran away to Florida I got out all the things I wanted to send to them but failed to find a box. I'll rummage thru the recycle bin a t work to find a box and will ship it later this week.

Post a large bag of clothes and shoes I never wear to Freecycle-if
you've never heard of it, check it out. It's an amazing resource to
receive and get rid of items that you are done with but not quite ready
for the landfill. This was by far the easiest task on my list. I posted the ad early in the day, had a response by noon and the bag was picked up around 7pm!!

Research (that's what
I'm calling net surfing) podcasts on iTunes. A friend keeps raving
about them and I really need to get with the times!! Learned I can only search for podcasts thru iTunes which is installed on Mr. Awesome's computer. I would have just jumped over 3 feet and booted his up except it's slower than molasses on a cold day so it seemed a huge waste of time. I'll need a few hours dedicated to my search and therefore will postpone to a rainy, cold weekend.

Tear my computer room
apart in search of the CD-ROM with the driver for our webcam. It's a
Microsoft product which means I can't download the driver from their
website. I'd like to take this moment to say I want an iMac. I can't
explain, well at least in words that are appropriate for public use, how
much I dislike most Microsoft products. The suck....I'll leave it at
that. I think the scary hairball monster stole the disc. I'm gonna get ahold of a few techie friends to see if they can help me as a last resort. Otherwise I'm putting the webcam on the shooting wall and working on my target shooting!!

Today hasn't fared very well either. Wednesday mornings are dedicated for work at the camp. I have the order I placed earlier in the week arriving and I have to meet with my favorite food rep to place an order from her company. Not to mention the weekly staff meeting. Normally, I'm in and out in a few hours but with the upcoming festival and subsequent HUGE order to deal with I ended up putting in a 6 hour day. No school work was done, no laundry washed, no chore lists wonderfully checked off. Nothing.

I'm taking an hour to unwind mentally then will try and do something productive around here. A list would just be a waste of time today so I'm skipping it. Maybe I'll make up for it by creating a longer list for tomorrow. Or not!!!

Monday, September 26, 2011

As promised, here's an update to my 5 Things post. I know you all were waiting with bated breath to see if I was able to accomplish it all. So here goes...

My 5 things for Monday, in no particular order:

Work with Littlest Oompa on finishing his writing sample for school -We didn't just knock this out we tackled an entire day of school work.

Make a batch of crock pot apple butter- This is still cooking away in the crock pot, it may not actually be done till tomorrow.

Wash and dry 1 load of laundry and fold the load that's sitting in a basket on the kitchen table-Didn't get to the folding part till late this afternoon, but it's all ready for the Oopmas and Mr. Awesome to put away!!

Run into work to inventory and place this week's food order (1 hour maximum)- Unfortunately, this took more like 2 hours. We are getting ready for one of our huge fundraising festivals and planning food for 800 or so is a little daunting. I spent a little more time double checking than usual, but it got done.

Sweep and vacuum floors...there is a serious hairball growing in the
bathroom that looking like at any moment it's gonna spring up and
attack someone....seriously. It's totally grody. -I banished the hairball monster!!

I think my little experiment of broadcasting my to-do list to the world make me a little more accountable and less likely to dork off completely. I have been know to dork off...I majored in dorking off in school. I have a gift.

My quandary (noun-state of perplexity or doubt and totally cool word) is this: Laundry is an everyday, never ending, life sucking, mind-numbing, face melting, dream haunting chore around these here parts. Since running a load of laundry is a given during the course of my day should it take up valuable space on my daily list? For the rest of the week I will not include laundry on my list and see how it goes. Let's see if I can keep it rolling!! My 5 things I really, really, really, really want to accomplish on Tuesday:

Layout pattern and get material cut to make girl Oompas' jammies

Make up and mail a care package to my wonderful in-laws who ran away to Florida

Post a large bag of clothes and shoes I never wear to Freecycle-if you've never heard of it, check it out. It's an amazing resource to receive and get rid of items that you are done with but not quite ready for the landfill.

Research (that's what I'm calling net surfing) podcasts on iTunes. A friend keeps raving about them and I really need to get with the times!!

Tear my computer room apart in search of the CD-ROM with the driver for our webcam. It's a Microsoft product which means I can't download the driver from their website. I'd like to take this moment to say I want an iMac. I can't explain, well at least in words that are appropriate for public use, how much I dislike most Microsoft products. The suck....I'll leave it at that.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

I am a serial lurker over on Sufficientself.com and recently read and actually participated in a post titled "5 things".

The idea was that if you posted, for the world to see, a 5 item long to-do list, you'd be more inclined to accomplish it. It works, at least for me. I didn't want to post a follow-up announcing my failure to the world. I'm vain like that!
I'll be the first to own up to my Super Woman complex and have at time set ridiculously high standards for myself. I want to be a mix of Martha Stewart, P. Allen Smith, Rachel Ray, Dr. Oz and that freaky witch of a trainer from the Biggest Loser. Um, can we say deluded?? I'm working on it.....really. The biggest problem, for me at least, is when I fail at being all these amazing people wrapped into one, I get frustrated and shut down. Thereby accomplishing nothing. This would qualify as not a Good Thing.

That's kinda why the 5 things list appealed to me. Accomplishing 5 things over the course of one day is easy.
I'm gonna give it a try for the next week to see if I can actually be productive.

So...drum roll please....

My 5 things for Monday, in no particular order:

Work with Littlest Oompa on finishing his writing sample for school

Make a batch of crock pot apple butter

Wash and dry 1 load of laundry and fold the load that's sitting in a basket on the kitchen table

Run into work to inventory and place this week's food order (1 hour maximum)

Sweep and vacuum floors...there is a serious hairball growing in the bathroom that looking like at any moment it's gonna spring up and attack someone....seriously. It's totally grody.

What am I counting down to?? Christmas, of course!! The first day of fall came and went, the weather has cooled off, the ground is lightly littered with yellow and orange leaves and I'm in the Christmas mood!! Does this mean I've decked my halls or strung festive lights off my gutters?? Uh, no. I'm not that crazy. I am however, rediscovering my love of sewing. I enjoy making gifts for family at Christmas. Now, don't get me wrong....a nice store bought gift that fulfills someone's wish list is usually what goes around here. I just like to supplement with unexpected, homemade, love-filled gifts.

Problem is, I rarely can restrain myself into holding on to those early works until the special day. Case and point:

These flannel jammies were intended to be a nice extra under the tree. You can see how easily I caved and gave them to littlest Oompa early!!! "Uh, happy..um...um...Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, gah!! Happy first day of fall...yeah, yeah that's it!! Happy first day of fall!" Littlest Oompa just looked at me like I had suddenly sprouted horns. Then he obligingly modeled them for this photo. Isn't he cute???

The material is a amazingly soft flannel I picked up on sale for $2.99 a yard. These snazzy, rocker jammies cost a total of $5.25 which includes the elastic for the waist. Not a bad price even if you include my two hours of labor. I used this Simplicity pattern which is great because it includes several sizes in one.

I will be able to use this pattern for many more years to come. It's simple and the only modification I'll need to make in the future is a slightly larger neck opening. Unfortunately, Little Oompa inherited my "big fat round Irish head". Poor kid....if he ever goes bald he'll look like Charlie Brown!!!

I have several more pieces of flannel that I will use to make the girl Oompas some much needed jammies too. Do I have the will power to hold out till Chirstmas?? Probably not. That just means I'll have to make several pair...one for now...one for later!!